What a Word

As much as PowerPoint remains top of the pile when it comes to presentation apps the rest of the MS Office suite is also heavily utilised in education. Word is of course the most commonly used one by a long shot. Most types of document we work with are Word files, from assignment briefs to the reams of redundant, badly designed templates handed down as gospel.

The overarching problem with Word isn't so much Word itself - as a document layout application it's pretty good. It has a huge range of features (so long as you can find them) and is capable of creating very tight, nicely designed documents. Its templating system has had quite the overhaul over the last couple of releases and can deal with all sorts of forms, hand-outs and official red-tape stuff. It also has a good built-in system for dealing with referencing and automating various tasks. What sucks about Word is that everyone tries to use it for things it was not meant to do.

The thing is, Word can do a LOT of things that encroach on the functionality of other types of software, to the extent that users try to use Word like it is something that it is not. Here are a few things that Word isn't:

1. A word processor. Huh? Isn't that what Word is designed to be? OK, so Word is more technically a 'WYSIWIG word processor' as it contains all the design tools as well as text handling functionality. When I say 'word processor' I more accurately mean a word composer or text editor - an app that only deals with the efficient entry of text, with none of that design and typesetting to distract the user. Authors and journalists are more likely to use a plain old text editor or vim and send the results off to someone else for layout than they are to use Word at all.
2. A DTP package. Word has some fairly useful tools to lay out the design of a document, but next to a dedicated DTP program it is restrictive and underpowered. True desktop publishing gives you fine grained control over every facet of typesetting and printing. Word doesn't, but that doesn't stop people from trying to force it to do what they want. Word is not meant to design flyers, posters or magazines, but equally a DTP program is next to useless as a text composer and overkill for most types of academic document. If you need to do any heavier layout and are determined to stay in the MS suite give Publisher a go. Other choices are QuarkXPress or Adobe InDesign.
3. A spreadsheet. Word has some spreadsheet-esque things it can do to tables, such as some limited formulas, but there's no way it can cope with the demands of anything more than a simple shopping list. It certainly can't function as the core document in an entire faculty's ordering system. Yeah, I seen't it. Use Excel for crying out loud - you can embed spreadsheets into Word so you can have the best of both worlds!
4. Web design software. I have a certain choice of language reserved for anyone who thinks the 'save as a web page' option in Word is a good idea. I've been doing web design for years and without a shadow of a doubt, the worst, buggiest, least compatible and frustrating web code in existence is that which comes from Word's web export feature. It's an abomination.
5. A teaching aid. Word is a great choice to author many handouts and other supporting materials but it really isn't designed to be used in a live lecture. I have seen tutors use a Word document like a PowerPoint, scrolling through the pages like slides. It's clumsy and lacks immersion. My opinion is that students should never see a Word .DOCX from you, ever. Any documents you want to distribute should be in PDF format - Word is to documents as Photoshop is to JPEGs: an editor, not a viewer.

I will finish with a pro-tip. You see the 'Home' tab on the ribbon? Notice all the tools there to change the font, or text size, or the colours, bullet points and indentations? Forget them. They are dead to you. Instead look to the right at the selection of styles. This is where you should be formatting your documents. Get to know them, learn how to customise them or add your own, then never ever again should you ever click on the bold icon. Your documents will flow better, you will work quicker and style changes will be straightforward. If you need convincing, here's Microsoft's introduction to using styles, straight from the horse's mouth.